If you happen to be in Manhattan in the near future, head over to 34th Street Herald Square and take note of the giant Windows Phone that has taken up residence there. It is huge. It is also a perfect representative of what Microsoft is willing to do to push Windows Phone on the public.
There have been concerts, shows and even a marriage proposal in the six-story Windows Phone in the middle of Manhattan. It is gaudy Microsoft marketing at its best (anybody remember the ProjectNatal/Kinect announcement?) and will be one of the first signs of wave of marketing coming from both Microsoft and Nokia. How will much will this matter for Windows Phone going forward?
My God Simon, There Are Live Tiles Everywhere
We got a full preview of what Nokia is going to do with its Windows Phone marketing at Nokia World in London several weeks back. Nokia brought in designers to cook up color schemes that will appear to the young (green, pink, blue and black) as well as a guerilla-style marketing plan. That plan is intended to get people to take their phones out of their pockets and take a picture of some oddity, like a guy in a live tile running down the street. Think of the concept of Improv Anywhere or a flash mob singing Christmas carols, just with Microsoft marketing bent.
The spectacle is what this absurd Windows Phone is doing in downtown Manhattan. Tell me, really, are you going to walk by that monstrosity and not take a picture of it? It is all part of the climb back for Windows Phone to market relevance and it shows how important that is to Microsoft. This week marks the year anniversary of Windows Phone and if sales topped five million for the year, that would be a surprise.
“This is a long effort and will take time to unfold. What we saw in NY is the level of marketing and energy Microsoft is willing to put behind Windows Phone and the degree of investment and commitment already in the project,” said Al Hilwa, program director of application development software at IDC in Seattle.
Winning At Mobile
Apple was the first salvo in the smartphone platform war. Windows Mobile CE was actually ahead of Apple and quite a bit before Android and CE still holds a disconcerting amount of market share for a series that was discontinued more than a year ago. There is too much potential in mobile for Microsoft to not push as hard as possible with Windows Phone and the company has the money to spend to not only market it, but build the platform around it. In that regard, Nokia is on board.
“The potential phone market is a much bigger market than the PC market as it might reach several billion annual devices sold in a few short years, but there is no doubt it is an application platform war and it is no accident that the iPhone is brought to us by the same vendor that gave us Macintosh,” said Hilwa.
The Nokia Lumia 800
We were the first to report that Nokia will be bringing a variety of Windows Phones to the U.S. with unique specifications across carriers. You thought that you saw a big wave of marketing for Android phones coming from each carrier? Wait until Nokia, Microsoft and all the operators are pushing Windows Phone in the U.S. next year.
What do you think? Is persistence, Windows Phones the size of small buildings and a fistful of dollars going to be enough to push Windows Phone to relevance? Let us know in the comments.
